Hi and I'm

I'm your host.

Hi and welcome back to Nighty Night,

Bedtime stories to keep you awake.

My name is Ravi Jodry and I'm your host. In this week's story, we encounter a prank

gone Dudley and bravado that did not serve anyone well.

A Watcher by the Dead, by Ambrose Beers. Part 1. In an upper room of an unoccupied dwelling in the part of San Francisco known as North Beach lay the body of a man under a sheet.

The hour was near nine in the evening.

The room was dimly lighted by a single candle.

Although the weather was warm, the two windows, contrary to the custom which gives the dead plenty of air, were closed and the blinds drawn down.

The furniture of the room consisted of but three pieces

an arm chair a small reading stand supporting the candle and a long kitchen table supporting the body of the man

All these, as also the corpse, seemed to have been recently brought in.

For an observer had there been one, would have seen that all were free from dust, whereas everything else in the room was pretty thickly coated with it, and there were cobwebs in the angles of the walls.

Under the sheet, the outlines of the body could be traced, even the features, these having that

unnaturally sharp definition which seems to belong to faces of the dead, but is really characteristic of those only that have been wasted by disease.

From the silence of the room one would rightly have inferred that it was not in the front

of the house facing a street. It really faced nothing but a high

breast of rock, the rear of the building being set into a hill.

As a neighboring church clock was striking nine with an indolence which seemed to apply such an indifference to the flight of time that one could hardly help wondering why it took the trouble to strike at all, the single door of the room was open, and a man

entered advancing toward the body.

As he did so, the door closed, apparently of its own volition.

...